At the moment, the shares of a majority of publicly traded Chinese companies are listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange – the fastest growing stock exchange in the Asian region today.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has announced that the country will establish a new stock exchange based in Beijing. According to him, the new exchange will focus on smaller Chinese companies.

“We will continue to support the innovation-driven development of small- and medium-sized enterprises by […] setting up the Beijing Stock Exchange as the primary platform serving innovation-oriented SMEs [small- and medium-sized enterprises]”, Xi Jinping said.

In addition, the Chinese president promised to “deepen” reforms of the “new third board”, also known as the National Equities Exchange and Quotations (NEEQ) – an entity first established in 2006 to help promising Chinese start-ups. Under the wave of reforms announced back in 2019, NEEQ began differentiating between various SMEs based on their performance – the exchange would select the best performing firms and then help them develop further, attract financing, and go public on a stock market.